Younger people are no longer regular drinkers, data reveals

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Regular drinking may soon be a thing of the past, new research suggests, as it finds that younger people have a very different relationship to alcohol than the generations before them.

Taking answers from around 1.7 million people, research unit Our Future Health found that people in their 40s may be the last group to exceed government regulations around alcohol.

Participants in this age bracket were 52 per cent more likely than their younger cohorts to consume more than 14 units of alcohol a week.

While only 12.9 per cent of those 18 to 39 drank above the recommended limit, nearly one in five (19.2 per cent) of those in their 40s exceeded this amount.

This also trend continues as participants get older, the data reveals. It found that over a quarter of people in their 50s (26 per cent), and a peak of 28.2 per cent of people in their 60s, are regularly exceeding the alcohol limit every week.

Ros Blackwood, Our Future Health’s director of population health, said it the scale of the programme has given “insights into alcohol by age, sex and income at a scale that hasn’t yet been possible in health research.”

Regular drinking may soon be a thing of the past , new research suggests (Getty/iStock)

She added that it provides “the opportunities to delve deeper into risks, protective factors, longer-term health impacts of alcohol and inequalities are huge.”

The data points to a considerable change in drinking culture between the generations, who also revealed very different habits around when they decided to drink.

While most reported consuming alcohol at points, around a quarter of under-40s said they only did so on special occasions. This compares to 13 per cent of those in their 60s.

Less than two per cent of those in their 20s drink daily, rising to 14 per cent for those in their 60s, and nearly one in four of those in their 80s.

Dr Richard Piper, chief executive of charity Alcohol Change UK, said: “This is further encouraging evidence that cultural shifts around alcohol are possible, with younger generations drinking less often and at lower levels than those older than them.

“It’s also an important reminder that alcohol harm isn’t just a young person’s issue, with the data mirroring the trends we’ve been seeing in the Health Survey for England,” she told The Telegraph.

“Consumption is more frequent and at more harmful levels among those in middle and later life, likely due to decades of pervasive and poorly regulated advertising by alcohol companies normalising alcohol and creating the notion it is essential to our lives.

“Indeed, it looks like older age groups have something to learn from younger generations on this occasion.”